Assault Squadron - Book One Read online

  ASSAULT SQUADRON

  Book One

  By D K Evans

  Copyright D K Evans, All rights reserved.

  Reproduction of any kind is prohibited unless done so with written permission from the original author.

  The places, persons, entities and events depicted in this work are fictional and figments of the author’s imagination/used in a fictitious context. Any resemblance to actual events, people or organizations is purely coincidental.

  Cover/promotional images used under license from DepositPhoto.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Author's Notes

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ford cursed under his breath as he wrenched on the joystick and threaded his small craft around the side of a massive space rock that had suddenly lurched into his path. The asteroid field provided good concealment, but it could prove to be a deathtrap if he wasn’t careful.

  “I hate these missions,” Yelham, his co-pilot grunted as he watched the hundred meter wide chunk of ice-covered basalt go sailing past, “All this cloak and dagger shit… makes me wish I was still just riding a desk instead. Not out here in the back of beyond waiting to get lit up by a Federation patrol whilst whoever the hell we’re meeting takes his sweet time to make contact.”

  “Just relax,” Ford murmured as he cast an eye over the sensor screens, “It looks clear for now, with any luck, we’ll get out of here without so much as getting a glimpse of the enemy.”

  “Don’t fucking jinx it, dude!” Yelham whined, “You know you shouldn’t say stuff like that!”

  Ford just snorted as his copilot carried on ranting. The younger man’s sensitive disposition could be a pain in the ass sometimes, but Ford still found it entertaining to wind him up.

  The flight computer showed them as being almost at the rendezvous point. The coordinates had arrived with little notice, as they always did. Security was always tight. It had to be that way for the rebellion to operate safely. Well, as safely as a rebellion could operate. The messages were encrypted, but sooner or later, the Federation would crack the code and send fighters to crash the party. Hence the short notice – that way, Ford and his fellow recovery crews would have a head start on getting to the supply cache first. Theoretically. If enemy ships turned up today it wouldn’t be his first run-in with them, he thought ruefully. And hopefully it wouldn’t be his last.

  “Who do you think even sends this stuff?” Yelham asked, as though reading the next question on his mind, “I mean guns, missiles, ion fuel – these are some big-ticket items right? Who do you think has the kind of cash to get hold of them, much less send ships to drop them off all the way out here?”

  “Damned if I know. Probably some tycoon with a big grudge against the Federation and a wallet just as large.”

  “It doesn’t bother you? Not knowing who’s helping us or why?”

  “Look, I’m just paid to fly,” Ford shrugged, “If I was clever enough to answer these questions, do you really think I’d be out here risking my neck and stuck listening to your whiny ass?”

  “It’s just weird, is all,” Yelham sighed as he gazed out of the cockpit at the distant stars, “I get why they don’t tell us. But missions like this, where it’s all super-duper secret? That’s when I want to do some real digging. Find out what they aren’t telling us.”

  Ford raised his eyebrows and shot a glance over at his copilot, “Don’t even think about looking inside the crate when we get it on board! There could be anything in there. And I don’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity if it turns out to have some kind of self-destruct device attached.”

  “I was just thinking out loud, man. I didn’t mean that I was going to actually do anything.”

  “Well keep it that way. As I said – we’re here to fly, not to think.”

  The ship skimmed around the surface of another hulking lump of frozen dirt as Ford cast a glance at the navigation computer. They were almost at the coordinates.

  “There!” Yelham cried and jabbed a finger forwards.

  Ford followed his gaze and saw it. Faint amongst the tumbling debris and clouds of dust but it was there all right. A distant green flash, intermittently blinking in the darkness. It was the beacon. They were right on time.

  In a hurried flurry of fingers across the controls, Ford aimed the ship directly towards it and then killed the engine and backup power, listening as the background whine died down and seeing the heads-up display fade into nothingness. This was the most dangerous part of the job and he wanted to make them appear as unobtrusive as possible to any sensors that may be surveying the area. The pair of them checked their suits and nodded to each other before exiting the cockpit and moving in zero gravity into the cargo hold of the ship. Yelham did the final checks to make sure that everything was securely tied down as Ford clambered hand over hand to the exit ramp. He reached down and grabbed hold of the manual release lever before shooting a glance over to his copilot who was readying the magnetic grapple that they’d use to reel their cargo in.

  “Here we go again,” Ford muttered before wrenching the lever towards him.

  With a gentle sigh, the rear ramp opened slightly before the remaining oxygen in the ship gently pushed it all the way open. Ford cranked the lever back the other way in order to lock the door in place and tentatively eased himself up out of the opening and onto the back of the ship. They were still moving at considerable speed and he flinched as a small cloud of dust pattered over his helmet. Hanging onto the hull for dear life, he used his free hand to reach forward with his safety line and clip it onto one of the railings that ran along the spine of the craft. His heart pounding just a little less than before, Ford started pulling himself towards the front of the ship, to where the controls for the auxiliary guidance system were located just above the cockpit. To be honest, ‘auxiliary guidance system’ was too grand a name for it, he thought as he crawled forward under another shower of dust, in actual fact it was just a bunch of helium canisters that had been crudely welded to the outside of the ship with a latticework of hydraulics operating them. To ‘guide’ the ship, you simply used the controls to steer yourself in the direction you wanted with a puff of compressed gas. It looked pretty dumb when the thing was sitting in a hangar, but Ford had to admit that in a vacuum it performed pretty well. And the best part was that it had absolutely no electronic signature whatsoever.

  ‘The absolute cutting edge of rebel stealth technology,’ he grinned to himself ruefully.

  “We ready to rock and roll?” Yelham suddenly chirped over the short-range comms.

  “Shit!” Ford cursed as his colleague’s voice cut through the silence, “Yeah I’m at the controls now. Should only be a minute until we’re at the crate, so be ready on your end.”

  “I was born ready!”

  “Roger,” Ford grunted in reply, though in truth he failed to see how anyone could possibly claim to be ‘born ready’ for this kind of work.

  Grabbing onto the ice-covered control panel, he set his sights on the blinking green light ahead of them. Much closer now. They were drifting to the left a bit too much, so he jabbed a button and watched as a burst of helium came off the side of the ship and eased them back on course. A flicker in his peripheral vision made him glance upwards, but there was nothing to see, just more dust and space rocks. Ford shook his hea
d and fixed his gaze back on the beacon. He hated being outside the ship, it made him paranoid.

  “Twenty seconds…” he murmured over the radio as they drew closer.

  “Fifteen…” he course corrected to put them on a direct path, using the tip of the ship’s nose as an aiming point.

  “Twelve seconds…” he could see the crate now behind the glare of the beacon.

  “Eight…” Ford squinted. It was odd, it didn’t look like the other’s they’d picked up.

  “Two... one… NOW!” He punched a preset command on the control panel and hung on for dear life as the ship span in a perfect one hundred and eighty degree turn.

  In the entrance to the cargo hold, Yelham was waiting with the grappling launcher. For a couple of seconds, the stars span past crazily before the ship came to an abrupt stop with the crate filling most of his view. With no hesitation, he fired the grapple and watched as the magnetic clamp flew straight to its target and locked in place. Instantly, he turned and fitted the tether into the ship’s winch system.

  “Contact!” he called through his mic as he idly watched the crate start to turn on the spot from the force of the grapple’s impact.

  Outside, Ford breathed a sigh of relief and shut down the control panel before pushing himself back towards the rear hatch. He twisted round again as he reached the midsection of the ship – he thought he’d seen another flash off in the distance, but again there were just stars and darkness. Ford shuddered as he turned back to the surface of the ship. He hated spacewalks. It wasn’t just the paranoia, but the knowledge that if something went wrong, then whatever direction you went floating off in, you would just be left falling. Forever. Maybe it was some kind of vertigo. Whatever the feeling was, Ford hurried twice as much to get back inside the ship.

  Yelham was waiting for him on the ramp.

  “See?” he exclaimed, “Easy! No hassle!”

  “Ok, let’s just get this thing secured and then get the hell out of here,” Ford replied as he breezed past into the cockpit and turned the power back on, warming up the engine for a fast escape. He returned to the hold and the pair took up positions on either side of the ramp as the winch started hauling their illicit cargo towards them.

  “Looks different to normal,” Ford grunted as the metal box was hauled steadily towards them.

  “How so?”

  “Just look at it – it’s smaller than usual and has no markings, just bare metal. It’s not a standard freight container, I’ll tell you that much.”

  “Oh so now you wanna take a look inside?” Yelham grinned.

  “Shut it! I’m just saying it’s weird is all.”

  The box finally reached the rear of the ship and the pair carefully grabbed hold of it and guided it up the ramp. Setting it down in the middle of the floor, Yelham got to work tying it down as Ford floated over to the ramp controls and started to close the hatch. Just as the asteroid field was disappearing from view behind the metal door, Ford caught another glimpse of light in his peripheral vision and shook his head. He peered out through the rapidly closing gap and smiled, happy to be safely back inside the ship.

  Then he saw the flash again.

  “Ah damn it…” he murmured.

  “What now?” Yelham asked as he pulled another strap over the top of the crate.

  As the hatch firmly sealed itself shut, Ford caught one last glimpse of a red dot in the far distance. The tell-tale crimson of a Federation engine plume. He lunged for the cockpit door.

  “Get that box secured tight!” he called, “We’ve got company!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Almeida CT-34 had never been specifically designed for combat. The small, dart-shaped vessel type had first been manufactured for simple customs or search and rescue assignments in a distant sector a couple of centuries back. Truth be told, it wasn’t much good at either of those roles and was soon relegated to police duties in systems too sleepy or sparsely populated to actually require a police force. Somehow it failed to satisfy in that role too, and eventually every surviving example found itself moored in a Federation orbital junkyard.

  Most people would regard such ships as trash. Barely worth the metals they were made out of. But for the rebels, they were a juicy prize and were soon grabbed and distributed to eager groups of resource-starved insurgents. A few haphazard engine upgrades and some truly questionable welding work later and the CT-34s were mostly back in action. And whilst none of them could take on a Federation fighter in open combat, they had damn well proved their worth as blockade runners and getaway vehicles.

  ‘Quite literally, “drive it like you stole it”,’ Ford reasoned as he gunned the engine and executed a hard burn around another gargantuan asteroid, pushing him back into his seat and taking them deeper into the field.

  Yelham scrambled into his chair and buckled in, punching commands into the computer and pulling up a holographic display of their surroundings. Several red annotated markers were in closing from multiple directions, the uncertain depths of the asteroid field gradually resolving themselves out of the sensor fog into clumps of grainy pixels.

  “They’re coming at us from five angles!” he excitedly called out as he read through a scrolling column of sensor data. As they swooped around a cluster of smaller rocks, something neon red streaked past in the opposite direction.

  “Make that six!” Ford replied as the red dots on the readout started to get alarmingly close. Warning sirens blazed in their ears as the Federation pilots started to try and get a lock on their ship.

  Wordlessly, Yelham reached for the weapons panel and mashed the buttons. Three missiles detached themselves from the underside of the CT-34 and immediately turned and streaked towards their pursuers. Like most of the rebel’s equipment, the weapons were as obsolete as they were cheap, but they’d at least buy them some time. Yelham smiled at the display as the enemy fighters scattered in different directions, reflexively striving to not be the one unlucky bastard to take a missile to the face. After a few moments, they turned back in and the chase was on again. But it was enough, at these speeds, they had managed to put a couple of tens of kilometers between them and their pursuers.

  “What are we waiting for?” Yelham asked, “Let’s hit the jump drive and get the hell out of here!”

  “They’re still too close!” Ford shook his head as they weaved through the asteroid field, “If we try now, our drive signature could lead them right back to base!”

  “Shit!” Yelham watched the red icons on his display start to inch closer. Whilst the CT-34 was fast, the Federation craft were single seaters and purpose-built for maneuverability, meaning that they were having a much easier time threading their way through the rocks than the rebels. And out in open space, they would still be within weapons range. Sitting ducks. Damned if you do damned if you don’t.

  “Can’t you go any faster?” he asked.

  “Really?” Ford shot him a mystified glance, “We’re being chased by enemy fighters and you think that I’m holding a little something back? What, do you think I’m worried about voiding the warranty or something?”

  Yelham bounced his glove off his helmet in an attempt to put his head in his hands.

  “There!” Ford pointed to the display where a shadow was being cast by one particular asteroid, “What’s that?”

  “It’s just some rock… get us out of here!” the panic was starting to rise in Yelham’s voice.

  “I’m trying,” Ford grunted, “But why can’t we see past it?”

  Yelham tapped at the console and threw up his hands, “It’s solid lead – the damn thing’s blocking all our sensor data so I’ve no idea what’s on the far side.”

  Ford nodded and hauled on the controls veering towards the rock in question.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Yelham cried as the turn brought the enemy ships even closer.

  “If we can’t see past it, then neither can they,” Ford grinned, “So that’s exactly where we’re going.”
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br />   As soon as they passed onto the far side of the rock, Ford whirled the ship around and brought it in close. The Federation ships had dropped off their scanner, with the massive glob of lead causing half of the holographic display to turn into a mass of jumbled pixels.

  “Get the rest of the missiles ready,” Ford murmured as he slowly powered down the engine, trying to give the enemy the impression that their exhaust signature was fading into the far distance beyond the asteroid.

  “They’re getting closer,” Yelham said as an intermittent signal started to flicker across the display, “They’ll be here any second now…”

  Ford restlessly drummed his fingers against the throttle, suddenly aware of how remarkably calm he was.

  “Closer…” Yelham said, “Just a few seconds…”

  Ford rammed the throttle forwards and the ship jolted out from behind the asteroid. Six red flames were streaking right towards them.

  “Now!” he shouted and watched as Yelham hit the launch button. The remaining seven missiles spat away from the ship as the fighters turned to get away from the vessel that had appeared right in their path.

  The first missile found its mark almost right away – at that range there was almost no chance to evade. With a flash, the Federation ship disintegrated into a cloud of metal shards. The second dodged to the side to avoid the missile streaking towards it, but instead hurtled headlong into the giant ball of solid lead. Ford wrenched the joystick back as one of the fighters tried to evade in an upward turn, placing the enemy directly to their front. A long squeeze of the trigger peppered the fighter from nose to tail with rounds from the CT-34’s cannon, hitting something volatile and blasting the small craft apart in a brief gout of flame and sparks. The other three fighters zipped straight past them as the missiles went haywire, their antiquated guidance systems sending them hurtling off in random directions in search of their quarry. Ford accelerated again and followed after the enemy.